There are a lot of great music players for Windows, and it's next to
impossible to make a broad "best" statement that applies to everyone.
But that doesn't stop the powerful, lightweight, and customizable MusicBee from winning our hearts for the best music player on Windows.

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Note also that, while
MusicBee is taking the place of "best music player" for this app
directory, we know that a lot of you are fiercely loyal to your favorite
music player, and with good reason—there are a lot of fantastic
players for Windows. This is an app category that is very subject to
personal taste and needs, and we get that. Check out the Competition
section below for more info on some of our other favorites.

Sync Android phones, USB drives, some iPods, and many other portable music devices with your library

Convert files on-the-fly as you sync to your devices

Auto-tag your music using the music databases of your choice

Keep your files automatically organized in folder based on tags

Customize a number of different keyboard shortcuts

Subscribe, download, and listen to podcasts, either by searching MusicBee's podcast directory or by adding feeds yourself

Use advanced audio features like a 10-band equalizer, crossfade, WASAPI and ASIO playback, and more

Customize
your player with skins, different layouts and views, and three
different players including a mini player and compact player

A
plugin architecture that lets you add lots of functionality to the
player, like extra supported formats, skins, library organization tools,
and other features (Winamp plugins supported)

An integrated browser that allows you to
browse for just about anything in-player (useful for browsing plug-ins,
skins, and so on)

Where It Excels

MusicBee hits the perfect sweet spot between easy to use, customizable, powerful, and lightweight. iTunes converts
will have no problem getting to know the interface, but will also be
able to easily add and moving panes for things like lyrics, Now Playing,
artist information, and a lot more—without the pain of something like
foobar2000. You can sync with a number of devices (though iOS syncing is
very limited), auto-tag your files, customize a ton of keyboard
shortcuts, and perform a ton of other advanced features—or if you
prefer, you can just play your music through a simple, good-looking
player. And best of all, it's completely free.

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MusicBee only has one active developer working in his spare time, but it's also updated pretty darn often, has a great wiki, and a helpful forum where the developer is very active.

Where It Falls Short

As
the jack of all trades, there are always other players that will be
masters of one, and such is the case with MusicBee. It's very
customizable, but not as insanely customizable as foobar2000. It has
some useful advanced tagging and syncing features, but doesn't quite
reach the power of MediaMonkey. If you need to sync lots of iOS devices,
MusicBee will prove problematic (which is Apple's fault more than
MusicBee's), and you might be stuck with iTunes, MediaMonkey (which can
sync more iOS devices), or a third-party program like Copy TransManager just for syncing.

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MusicBee
also has a few other small annoyances. For example, MP3 and AAC
encoders need to be installed separately due to licensing reasons, but
anyone advanced enough to require the conversion features should have no
problem installing these separate programs.

The Competition

As
we mentioned at the top, your choice of music player is a personal one,
and what we consider the "best" isn't really the best for
everyone—that's not possible. Our goal with the App Directory is to
pick the best application for the majority of people, especially those
unfamiliar with the available apps. If you've tried MusicBee and don't
love it, here are some other great options.

MediaMonkey:
We debated between MediaMonkey and MusicBee for a long time before
settling on MusicBee. MediaMonkey does have a few other features—like iOS syncing
and DLNA sharing—but it isn't quite as good-looking or as lightweight
as MusicBee. Most importantly, however, is that some of MediaMonkey's
features—including smart playlists, on-the-fly conversions, advanced
searching, automatic library organization, and others—require a $25
version license or $50 lifetime license to access. Considering that
these features are all available for free with MusicBee, it was hard to
recommend the more limited MediaMonkey as the best player. Still,
depending on your needs, it may be ideal for you.

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Winamp:
Winamp may be dead, but it's still a pretty solid player. It doesn't do
much that MusicBee and MediaMonkey don't (Shoutcast support being one
exception), but if you long for the llama-whipping days of the 90s or
like its expansive list of skins, it could be worth a try.

Sponsored

Foobar2000:
Foobar2000 is extremely lightweight and insanely customizable. It won't
do much but play and tag music out of the box, but it also has a lot of
plugins that let you customize its features to a ridiculous level. It's a bit more difficult
to use than Winamp or MediaMonkey, though, especially when you first start customizing—so it's really a better
player for advanced users that want to tweak every dark corner of the
player.

iTunes:
We aren't huge fans of iTunes
on Windows, but if you're an iPhone user,
it's certainly the easiest way to sync your music, apps, playlists, and
other info to your phone (since it was made for it). That's pretty much
the only reason to use it in our opinion, though, and even then,
MediaMonkey can still sync to iDevices quite nicely, so we'd try that
first.

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These are some of the biggest ones, but there are still a ton of others, like Windows Media Player, the Zune Player, AIMP3, Clementine, and even VLC
(though we'd be hard pressed to call that a fully-featured music library
program). The best thing you can do when looking for a music player on
Windows is try a few out. If you don't feel like sifting through a ton
of players, though, I'll eat my hat if you can't make MusicBee work the
way you want it to.

Lifehacker's App Directory
is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best
applications and tools in a number of given categories.